


This Lonely Hour Before Daybreak

by cheesethesecond



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-06
Updated: 2014-05-06
Packaged: 2018-01-23 19:37:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,912
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1577108
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cheesethesecond/pseuds/cheesethesecond
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve knew there would be good days and bad days. That’s how this sort of thing worked. </p><p>Except sometimes, the bad days go like this.</p>
            </blockquote>





	This Lonely Hour Before Daybreak

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kvikindi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kvikindi/gifts).



> A fic commissioned by the lovely septembriseur on Tumblr. This is a continuation of [Scratched Ragged and Rubbed Raw](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1514783), but can also be read as a stand-alone if you so choose. Warning: here be feels.

Steve knew there would be good days and bad days. That’s how this sort of thing worked. Some days would be bad days, full of screaming and crying and possibly danger, _probably_ danger, but not even at ninety pounds soaking wet did Steve Rogers balk at danger. And then, like a light at the end of the tunnel, there would be good days. Quiet days spent on the couch, heads bent together, talking and remembering and maybe, maybe, there would be smiles. There would be teasing, and laughter. There would be Steve and Bucky again, as there was in the beginning.

Except sometimes, the good days go like this:

Bucky’s on the couch, curled in on himself, digging his fingers into his temples. He’s already drawn blood under his eye, a long scratch from metal on flesh. He’s making a low sound in his throat – not quite a whine, not quite a growl, a constant, steady hum that Steve could convince himself is just a ringing in his ears. He’s got a hand on the back of Bucky’s head, which Bucky doesn’t seem to notice.

“You can stop, if you want,” Steve says, though he hopes that Bucky won’t.

Bucky shakes his head. “I can’t,” he chokes, “there’s something… ”

“You’ll get it,” Steve murmurs. This is how Bucky remembers things – not with a sigh and a smile, but slowly, agonizingly. There’s a fence holding back all his memories, and that fence is electric and covered in barbed wire. But it’s the only escape route, and Bucky knows this. It hurts to climb into, but it will hurt just as badly to back out as it will to push through. Once he starts, he won’t stop.

Steve knows this. Steve prompts him anyway, because he wants Bucky to remember, and Bucky wants to remember. Sometimes Steve will say, “That reminds me of…” and sometimes Bucky will say, “This feels like…” and neither of them knows how to stop, how to give up this excruciating game of reminiscence. So they play and play, check and checkmate, chutes and ladders, x’s and o’s.

“Six of us in the forest…an explosion. In France? No. French. I’m speaking French. Someone was speaking French.”

“Good, good,” Steve says as Bucky falls back against the couch, exhausted, tipping his head back and closing his eyes. A part of Steve wants to know, _is this really worth it?_ Hours of throbbing headaches and gritted teeth, just to pull Jacques Dernier from the recesses of Bucky’s mind?

 _Of course it is_ , Steve tells himself, thinking of an exhibit at the Smithsonian, a united front, a flash of pride and fire in Bucky’s eyes once upon a time.

Bucky starts rambling in French, and Steve pats him on the shoulder. “Shh, that’s enough now,” he says. “You did good. 

Bucky shakes his head again. “ _Il ne suffit pas_ ,” he says. “Ah, Jesus.” He falls sideways and buries his face in the couch cushions. “Jesus Christ.”

Steve turns the lamp down and goes to get him a cold washcloth, a knot of guilt tangling up his insides, guilt for the bubble of triumph that will rise into his chest when he’s lying in bed that night, staring at the ceiling, thinking not of Bucky moaning in pain – that’s for the present, for the now – but of how it’s working, _it’s working._

Except sometimes, the bad days go like this:

Steve jerks awake. It’s still dark out, but he can hear birds singing. He takes a deep breath and sits up, sees a lump at the foot of his bed. He blinks. “Buck?”

The lump doesn’t move, doesn’t speak, but it blinks back.

Bucky is curled up on his side, his arms wrapped around his chest, his knees pulled up close to his body. He’s shivering, just so.

“You okay?” Steve asks. When Bucky doesn’t respond, he scoots over and pats the expanse of empty bed beside him. “Come on up here.”

Bucky swallows, and shakes his head.

“Plenty of room, pal,” Steve insists.

Bucky shakes his head again. He puts a tentative hand on Steve’s foot through the blanket.

Something within Steve pulls taut and vibrates, close to snapping. He will not let Bucky sit at the foot of his bed, silently begging for comfort, like a dog. “Can I come down there, then?”

Bucky sucks in a breath, and nods.

So Steve shifts and scoots and curls up across from Bucky, puts a hand on the side of Bucky’s head. Bucky leans into the touch and closes his eyes. _Like a dog_ , Steve thinks again, and his throat closes up. “Seriously, Buck, it’s so much more comfortable up there.” Bucky doesn’t take his eyes off Steve, looks hesitant to shut them for even a moment, and Steve gets it, suddenly. Bucky wants protection, but also wants to protect. He doesn’t want to be comfortable. He wants to keep watch.

“It’s alright,” Steve says, “we’re safe. I’m safe.” He doesn’t say, _You don’t need to protect me_. He doesn’t say, _Let me take care of us, for once_. He just runs a hand down Bucky’s arm. It feels like a failure, but he cannot deny Bucky what he’s silently asking for, not in this lonely hour before daybreak.

Bucky’s eyes flutter shut. He wakes up the next day at noon, more relaxed than Steve’s seen him. Bucky gives him a grateful, almost shy, smile, and Steve feels sick, exhausted. He did not sleep.  

So there are good days and bad days, but mostly there are days filled with false starts and sudden stops, days in which Steve cannot figure out if he is helping or hurting Bucky’s progress, if Bucky is even making progress at all, _what_ , exactly, progress is.

“I could’ve told you it wouldn’t be easy,” Sam says over coffee one day, while Bucky is sleeping.

“No, I knew it wouldn’t be easy,” Steve says. He tries to chuckle. “Just didn’t know it would be this damn hard.”

“You didn’t think rehabilitating your ninety-year-old brainwashed assassin best friend was gonna be hard?”

“No. No, of course I did. I just thought…I don’t know what I thought.”

“You thought you could sit outside his door and chase the nightmares away.”

Steve shrugs. “I don’t even know when he’s _having_ nightmares, you know? He doesn’t make any noise, doesn’t call out or scream or anything. I find him in the living room sometimes, just staring out the window. Can’t snap him out of it.”

“Have you ever considered that maybe you won’t be able to?”

“To what?”

“Snap him out of it. I mean, maybe you gotta accept that this isn’t something you’re gonna be able to Captain America your way through.”

Steve shakes his head, takes a drink of his coffee. “That doesn’t sit particularly well with me.”

Sam leans forward on his elbows. “How ‘bout you let me talk to him? Feel out the situation a little. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that you gotta take it on a case by case basis.”

“I don’t think this is like any case you’ve ever seen.”

Sam smiles. “Maybe I’m up for a challenge.”

Sam leaves for the afternoon and comes back around dinner time. Bucky wakes up half an hour before and shadows Steve, hovering near him while Steve microwaves a few hot dogs. They chew them silently, standing side by side. Sam knocks and lets himself in, and Bucky crowds Steve, pushing his shoulder against Steve’s back. “Hey, Sam,” Steve calls out, to let Bucky know he’s expected, but Bucky doesn’t relax.

“Hey, guys,” Sam says, hoisting a six pack onto the kitchen table. “I come bearing gifts.”

“I thought maybe you and Sam could hang out for a bit while I grab a quick nap,” Steve says. _I don’t need a babysitter_ , Steve wishes Bucky would say. Instead, Bucky nods, tense, and Sam grins at him, hands him a beer bottle. Bucky takes it, stares at it like it might bite him, before suddenly popping the cap off with the side of his metal hand.

Sam lets out a low whistle. “That’s one hell of a party trick. Where’d you learn that?”

“Moscow,” Bucky says, and takes a long drink.

Steve tries not to think too hard about it. “Have fun, Buck,” he says, and pats Bucky on the shoulder before retreating to his bedroom. He tries to sleep, tries not to listen, he really does, puts a pillow over his head and everything, but in the end, he ends up sitting right inside the door, his ear pressed against the wood.

“I get it, man,” he hears Sam say. “Kill or be killed. I know the drill.”

“Not really, though,” Bucky says. “They never said ‘kill or be killed.’ Just kill. Pierce used to tell me that I was important, that I was…‘shaping the century,’ or some shit. There was no use telling him it didn’t matter. That I was nothing.”

There’s a heavy beat of silence.

“So no,” Bucky continues. “You don’t get it.”

“You know what?” Sam says. “You’re right. I don’t get it. Not all of it. There’s no way me or anyone else is ever gonna get all of it. But I get some of it. I get what it’s like to rail against the orders given to you, and what it’s like to accept them, too, without thinking about it, just acting and only wondering later what you’ve done. I get what it’s like to have a part of you ripped away. And that guy in the other room? He gets a lot of it, too. He gets what it’s like to be out of time, to not quite fit in the hole they’re trying to shove you in.  So no, I’m not gonna get all of it, and neither is Steve, no matter how hard his stubborn ass tries.”

At that, Bucky gives a thick, wet laugh. Steve cracks a smile, knowing the words are for him.

“But here’s the thing: you don’t need one person to get all of it. You’ve got yourself a support system here, and bit by bit, these people around you are gonna help you understand what you’ve gone through.”

Steve realizes he’s holding his breath. He leans harder against the door and closes his eyes.

“You don’t need one person to be everything. You just need a few people to be something.”

And a weight seems to fall off Steve’s shoulders. He finds himself falling over to sprawl on his back on the floor, tired down to the bone. He falls asleep right there, and sleeps harder than he has in weeks.

The next morning, Steve is relaxed, and Bucky is relaxed. They talk about nothing over bowls of cereal, argue over the remote, Bucky naps on the couch and Steve just watches him, just memorizes the creases around his eyes and the way his nose crinkles and scrunches every so often in his sleep. When Bucky wakes up, they hunch over Steve’s record collection, Steve telling Bucky about his favorites and Bucky giving small, affirmative hums when something seems to strike him, and then.

Then.

The worst part is Steve can’t even remember what he said. It hadn’t mattered at the time. The only thing that had mattered was Bucky’s half smile as his fingers ghosted over the slip cover of a Glenn Miller album, and Steve said something, _something_ , and suddenly there’s a metal fist coming at his face.

He dodges out of the way with a split second to spare, and Bucky leaves a deep dent in the wall over the turntable. He’s reaching for something on his back, and Steve realizes if there was a gun where it used to be, where it was supposed to be, he’d be dead.

Bucky realizes this a few moments after Steve does, and he leans over and throws up right on the carpet. He sits down next to the mess, drops his head into his hands, and shakes.

Steve calls Natasha.   

She’s there in a few hours. Bucky hasn’t moved, and Steve’s shaking, now, too.

“I was _deep_ undercover, Rogers,” Natasha says, tossing her sunglasses on the table. “I can’t believe you called me out to be Bucky Barnes’s personal therapist.”

“Thank you, Natasha,” Steve says. “I just…thank you.”

“I can’t promise anything, you know that, right? Sometimes cognitive recalibration is just strategy, talking through it, sometimes it’s – ”

“Do not hit him on the head.”

Natasha smirks. “Aw, you’re no fun.”

“What can I do?”

“Nothing. Go out. Get yourself lunch. Take a few laps with Sam. Stare at yourself in the Smithsonian for a while.”

“You mean I can’t – ”

“Nope. Because you’re not gonna like it.”

“What are you gonna do?”

“Find his buttons.”

“So you can push them?”

“So I can get rid of them.” Natasha shrugs. “I know a thing or two about being undone, Rogers, so unless you want another hole in your wall, or in your face, you gotta trust me.”

“Cryo,” Bucky croaks out suddenly, his head still in his hands.

“What?” Steve asks.

“Put me back in cryo. Freeze me out. I’ll forget the last mission. I always do.”

“Bucky,” Steve says, gripping the back of a chair to steady himself.

“It hurts less than wiping me. And less than remembering.” Bucky lifts his head out of his hands and stares, pained, at the dent he made. “It’s a clean fix. You have the tech. You’re S.H.I.E.L.D.”

“Not anymore,” Natasha says, crossing her arms over her chest.

“Doesn’t mean you don’t still have the tech. You still know where your secrets’ secrets are. It’ll be easier for everyone if you just get rid of the mission. Get rid of me. Make me new.”

“You gotta stop asking for this, Buck,” Steve says. “You can’t, you just…can’t.”

“Cryo’s a big risk, Barnes, and we’re not gonna take it. Not until it’s the last resort,” Natasha says, and Steve rounds on her.

“What the hell do you mean – "

“Trust me, Steve,” she hisses. “Go.”

Steve goes.

Natasha comes over every week after that. Sometimes Bucky’s near catatonic afterwards and it’s all Steve can do not to send Natasha away and ask her not to come back. Sometimes he’s crying, sometimes he’s so tired that Steve has to help him into bed, sometimes he’s standing at the window and Steve is allowed to come over and rub his hand down Bucky’s back, sometimes he’s not, and sometimes, sometimes, Bucky and Natasha are sitting at the kitchen table, laughing and talking like old friends, and Steve hates himself, absolutely hates himself, for the little ball of envy that curls up in the pit of his stomach, the one that says to him, _Not enough. You’re not enough,_ when just weeks ago, that was a mantra of relief.

“What are you two so happy about?” Steve asks after he returns with groceries one afternoon, trying to keep his voice light and even. Bucky picks up on something, though, because he tilts his head and looks at Steve like he’s a puzzle to solve. Steve just raises his eyebrows at him.

“Barnes taught me how to dance,” Natasha says.

“She was bluffing,” Bucky says. “She knew how to dance. She just wanted to show off.”

“Me? Show off? I wouldn’t dare.”

Steve goes about making dinner while they chat in the background, and he gets it, he really does. To Bucky, Sam is the soldier, and Natasha is the comrade, and Steve, Steve is the shadow from a past he’s moving farther and farther away from, a past he doesn’t seem to be looking back for, doesn’t seem to be wanting.

Except, one day, Steve comes home and there’s music playing. "Moonlight Serenade" is on the turntable, and Bucky’s standing at the window, facing Steve this time, instead of staring out into the sky. “Hey.”

“Hey,” Steve says. “Good choice.”

“Yeah,” Bucky says. “I like it.”

“You always did.”

Bucky nods. “I like dancing. I _liked_ dancing. I remember that. Natasha helped me remember that. But I like it now, too. That’s important, isn’t it?”

“It is, Buck. Real important.”

“Will you?” Bucky rolls his shoulder and extends a hand to Steve.

And Steve’s crying before he even realizes it, before he takes Bucky’s hand and puts a hand on his waist and laughs when Bucky nudges his hip and goes, “You big sap.”

“You remember who taught me how to dance?”

Bucky nods, and smiles at him. They sway just a little, back and forth. “Afraid I’m a little rusty now. You wanna lead?”

And Steve thinks, _I’m so tired of leading_ , but then he stops, and he blinks, and he realizes that’s wrong, so wrong, because even when he was small, he had one foot off the line before anyone else. Except for Bucky. Sometimes he ran ahead of Bucky, and sometimes Bucky ran ahead of him, and sometimes, they ran side by side through the streets of Brooklyn with a pack of thugs on their heels and shit-eating grins on their faces, with Bucky yelling, “Come and get us!” all the way home.

Steve may get tired of leading, but he will never, ever stop.

“Of course I do,” Steve says, and Bucky loosens up in Steve’s arms, and the moon rises over D.C. before the dance is over.


End file.
